


Missing Pieces

by Artemis1000



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Healing, Injury Recovery, M/M, Robot/Human Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22225435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis1000/pseuds/Artemis1000
Summary: After Scarif, an injured Cassian Andor feels powerless to rebuild himself but he can rebuild K-2SO - and through this, maybe find the missing pieces to his own healing.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/K-2SO
Comments: 16
Kudos: 50





	Missing Pieces

Cassian Andor’s life had always been governed by a small number of unshakeable rules. No, it would have been a mistake to call them rules, for calling them rules meant they were arbitrary, man-made, and thus could be changed – but his rules were rather lessons learned or facts of life.

One of these not-rules was that singular lives meant little to the greater whole. Survival did not equate victory, victory was measured in the success of your mission.

When he had gone to Scarif, Cassian had known he wouldn’t make it off the planet again and he had been okay with that. He hadn’t been happy or gleeful about sending others to their death, never that, but both longtime rebels and his newfound companions accepted that the stakes were greater than their little lives.

It was another simple fact of life that Cassian Andor had been so convinced he would die on Scarif, he had no contingency plans for life _after_.

There were several downsides besides the obvious to having lost their home base, such as having to make do with the overcrowded medbays aboard their ships.

This, in turn, had its upsides, such as the doctors and med droids being far more willing to release you early to free up sorely needed beds. Cassian was the second-last of the core group now known as Rogue One to take advantage of this, with Bodhi still stuck in bacta. He had waited just long enough to avoid the medal ceremony.

The downside to this upside was that he was released from medbay, technically free as a bird, yet still imprisoned by the frailties of his own broken body. All of this on a rebel ship where nobody had much use for an Intelligence field agent.

There was, however, one of his team who hadn’t been sent to the medbay to be knit back together by droids and bacta, and thus Cassian made his own purpose.

Maybe sometimes, _rebuilding your life with your own hands_ could be taken literally. Certainly, Cassian didn’t like to wonder what it said about him that he couldn’t imagine life without K-2 in it – yet he knew the reason perfectly well, it just didn’t quite fit into the set of unshakeable rules that governed his life.

Out of all miraculous survivals, K-2 had been the biggest case of sheer dumb luck. Even so, it took Cassian days to repair even the worst of the damage and reboot K-2SO.

He had been placed in the middle of the workshop for this step, most of his outer plating still removed, exposing wiring and hydraulics alike and making him look far more vulnerable than Cassian could remember K-2 ever looking before.

His photoreceptors lit up sluggishly, flickering several times before they settled on the dim glow that came with minimum functionality.

Cassian stood before him, dark smears of oil blurring on his face with fading bruises and newly acquired dark shadows beneath his eyes. He stood there, his breath catching as he waited, heart pounding with irrational fear he hadn’t permitted himself to indulge in ever since their miraculous escape – what if he had misjudged the damage?

“You look terrible,” K-2SO declared, his voice warbly and off-key but so distinctly his own that Cassian’s heart thudded downright painfully in his chest.

Cassian just looked up at him for a moment before he chuckled and rubbed a hand over his face, scratching at stubble that had gone untended for too long. There were new cuts on his hands from sticking them into the torn-apart metal frame which sported far too many sharp edges to avoid them all.

“Not as bad as you, Kay,” he responded, his voice only the slightest bit choked up.

For a moment, they simply looked at another in silence, and while Cassian couldn’t tell what K-2 was thinking, he wanted to believe he shared in the same earth-shattering relief he felt at being reunited once again.

“Did we succeed?”

He swallowed hard and gave a sharp nod. “We did.”

K-2’s photoreceptors dimmed. “That is satisfying.”

Cassian reached for him, gingerly placing his hand in the middle of K-2’s chest where a scrap of outer casing remained. He could feel the vibrations of his machines beneath his fingers, weak and far from their usual smooth hum but alive, so very much _alive_. “I…” He licked his lips. Exhaled. “I’m glad I have you back.”

“I’m glad to be back with you, too.”

“It will be weeks before I can be sent into the field again,” he told K-2SO when he asked if he didn’t have anything better to do than fiddle with the pistons in his arms for the third day in a row.

They shared a moment of knowing silence, both understanding what this meant for Cassian, whose coping mechanisms all revolved around going from mission to mission so he would never have to deal with the aftermath.

“I can’t move my hands. I have no legs.” K-2 made a grave pause before adding, “And I still say you attached my left arm backward.”

Despite his best efforts not to, a snort of laughter snuck up Cassian’s throat. He had to hide it with an awkward choking noise. “Next time I’m not rebooting you until I’m done with the repairs.”

K-2 just looked at him, his photoreceptors still dim in power saving mode but intent as always when they focused on Cassian. “You wouldn’t know what to do without me in the meantime.”

He rolled his eyes and muttered, “Says you. The silence would be blissful.” He barely looked up from his work on K-2’s arm, not trusting his face not to betray him. The pace of his heart was already far too telling and he wouldn’t be surprised if K-2 could tell, even with the sorry state of his sensor array.

“You don’t like silence,” K-2 insisted, which was a lot kinder than many other things he could have pointed out.

Cassian didn’t agree but this time he couldn’t fully hide his reaction, stalling in his work with the miniature soldering iron. It was true. He didn’t like people but he didn’t like to be alone with his own thoughts either, for if he had nothing to distract him he would remember all the things he couldn’t afford to think about.

Yes, it was true, and there weren’t many things he had ever been able to hide from K-2O. Just that one all-important thing, really, and even in this, he couldn’t truly say if K-2 didn’t know or simply had his own reasons to go along with Cassian’s pretense.

“I don’t,” he agreed quietly. “But be quiet now and let me work.”

K-2SO didn’t obey and Cassian Andor wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Maybe it wasn’t even so much that he had a problem with silence in general – it was that he wanted K-2’s voice to be the one filling the silence.

He scrounged for scrap; cashing in what favors he had left after Scarif and the new fame it had gained him so the teams going off-world would return with what the countless parts needed.

Slowly, his body healed – and slowly, K-2SO was rebuilt under Cassian’s own hands.

K-2SO tilted his head and leaned closer, looming over him and announcing, “Moping still doesn’t suit you, Cassian.”

“Funny. You keep telling me that but I don’t see you being cheerful either.”

“The Rebel Legion lost its main base and three planets were destroyed before the Death Star was stopped. There is nothing to be optimistic about. Do you want me to calculate your current likelihood of success?”

Cassian’s lips twitched. “Ah, yes. What would I do without your unassailable optimism?”

“For one thing, you would spend even more time in medbay.” Even though his face was all immobile metal plates and grilles, K-2 still managed to exude smugness.

Cassian, being Cassian, wasn’t going to give him further encouragement so he just huffed to himself and quietly basked in K-2’s sheer solid presence.

He didn’t know what he would be doing without K-2 in his life but he was very glad he didn’t have to find out just yet.

He didn’t like to think about it either, so he focused on rebuilding K-2 – the only rebuilding left to him.

Cassian surveyed his work, nodding in satisfaction and feeling quiet contentment warm him which he might have called happiness if he put any importance at all in his own happiness.

“There we go. Now you have all your limbs attached and you’re fully functional. You’re as good as new.”

K-2SO gingerly stepped out of the repair array he had been strung up in and moved around the droid lab, gaining confidence with every step he took. He moved his arms and his head, testing the speed and range of his motions.

Cassian waited patiently, watching K-2 and listening to his usual acerbic commentary which he knew to be the thinnest of covers for his delight. The quiet contentment within him grew, fueled further by these pangs of painful, longing affection he so rarely permitted himself to think about.

“You didn’t do a terrible job at all,” K-2 decided when he completed his round and came to a stop in front of Cassian.

Returned to his full height, he was comfortably towering over Cassian again and just as comfortably slouched down to reduce the distance between them, while Cassian’s head was tilted back. When he sized Cassian up with all his droid intensity, he could almost _feel_ the scans he was being put through right now.

“Thank you,” K-2SO said finally. His voice was as soft as his vocalizer could make it.

Cassian smiled. His hand found K-2’s chest plate, palm resting flat against the hatch which he had once opened to reprogram an Imperial droid determined to kill him. His smile widened a little, turning fonder yet with the memory. It had been the beginning of their everything.

“Get your gear. We have a new mission, just you and I.”

It was back to the usual, Cassian grabbing the bag that had been ready for weeks and K-2SO griping about blasters – he was now allowed to carry one but one far too small for his liking.

The shuttle awaiting them was drab and inoffensive and though it smelled as if something had died in there, it felt more like coming home than Cassian’s quarters ever had in the weeks he had been caged on base.

He slipped into the pilot’s chair while K-2SO slipped into the one to his right and Cassian Andor’s galaxy shifted, setting itself right again when he hadn’t even fully understood the exact way in which it had been off before.

“All systems clear. Ready for takeoff?”

Their ship rose into the sky, flying up into the clouds and breaking through them to clear blue skies. Beyond them, the star-spangled black of the galaxy was waiting for them.

It was an ugly galaxy filled with terrible crimes and terrible people and good people who had to commit their own fair share of terrible crimes but it was still his galaxy. Cassian Andor had chosen to fight for it and if this meant carrying the burden of his wrongs, he would do so gladly over and over again.

He looked towards K-2SO sitting to his right and felt a pang of longing as he looked upon the missing piece in his almost-perfect picture.

The first kill after a long time without left him feeling raw, as it always did. You could build up immunity towards the pain of death as you could towards all poisons but if you didn’t keep deadening yourself to it, you would grow vulnerable once more. It was as human as it was inconvenient for an assassin.

He sat in the bay of their ship, back pressed against the closed hatch, legs tucked close to his chest and the blaster with which he had killed still dangling from his fingers – and more than anything else, Cassian Andor tried not to think.

K-2SO crouched before him, his legs too long and awkward for the position in which he sat. If he had been in any other state of mind, Cassian would have been amused by the sight.

Now, he had a tired glance for him and little else. “Just don’t tell me it’s going to be okay,” he said quietly.

“I won’t,” K-2 told him, looking more than a little offended, “I’m no organic.”

His lips twitched. “Of course.”

They looked at another for long moments and then K-2SO was reaching for him. Arms as long and gangly as his legs were reaching for him, spindly metal fingers framing his face with such gentleness that it made Cassian’s heart ache all over again with this deep, desperate longing that had only grown in the past weeks, forever overshadowed by the realization how close he had come to losing him for good.

“You don’t have to do it alone, Cassian,” K-2 told him, shifted towards him. Then his bright optics dimmed, the black pupil-like lenses shifting this way and that while he worked through something – Cassian couldn’t even begin to comprehend how a droid’s mind worked, though he dearly wanted to, but he could certainly recognize a man fighting with himself. “I wish you wouldn’t keep doing it alone.”

He smiled a little. “I’m not alone.” He placed his hand over K-2’s. “I have you right here to tell me when I’m doing something foolishly organic.”

K-2 made a little staticky noise.

His heart ached more. The blaster slipped from his hand, it clattered to the deck with the sharp noise of metal hitting metal yet Cassian paid it no mind.

“I’m tired, Kay,” he whispered. “I’m tired of fighting.”

“Then stop.”

It sounded so easy when K-2 put it like this, and he did indeed look at Cassian as if it was yet another of his much-lambasted flaws that he couldn’t see the obvious solution – and looking back on the past weeks and months, on the many days spent rebuilding K-2SO and through him, rebuilding himself, Cassian couldn’t help but quietly agree with him.

His breath hitched in his throat. “Would you stop with me?” he murmured, his own hand now reaching for the droid.

K-2 leaned into the fingers cupping his vocoder grille, all but nuzzling them. “I have been waiting for years for you to ask.”

That last puzzle piece moved to fall into place and for the first time, Cassian didn’t fight it. He let it happen, just as he let it happen that he moved towards K-2, that his lips brushed against metal in a kiss far too tender for men who lived lives as violent as theirs, and yet achingly sweet, so sweet, and he found himself longing for this sweetness, too.

“I want us to rebuild another, Cassian,” K-2 told him.

Cassian met his gaze and took his hand, brushing another kiss to the back of his fingers. “Then we will always rebuild another.”

The piece fell into place, completing his picture – and the galaxy was no better or less gruesome for it, but Cassian Andor knew they would both be stronger to face it.


End file.
